Michael Pierce wants to do more than push the pocket
Vikings' nose tackle wants to use his quickness to rush the passer like never before
By Matthew Coller
One of the most compelling drills in training camp is the one-on-ones between offensive and defensive linemen. You can feel the power from up close. It’s like standing on the side of the road while a tractor trailer drives by.
When Minnesota Vikings nose tackle Michael Pierce took his first one-on-one of camp, defensive line coach Andre Patterson expected him to be powerful but he saw something he didn’t anticipate: Some legitimate pass rushing chops.
“The first time he did it in 1-on-1 pass rush, I grabbed him and said, ‘Hey man don’t ever let anybody tell you you can’t rush the passer,’” Patterson said.
During Pierce’s four seasons with the Baltimore Ravens, he graded consistently by PFF as one of the most dominating run forces in the NFL, ranking as high as fourth in 2018, only behind Snacks Harrison, Akiem Hicks and Aaron Donald but Pierce never produced much pressure on quarterbacks, ranking 52nd among DTs in total QB pressures in 2018 and 66th in 2019.
His underlying numbers, however, suggested that when the 28-year-old D-lineman was given the chance to get after the passer, he could cause some havoc. Per PFF, Pierce had an 11.5% pass rush win rate in 2018, which ranked 28th of 123 DTs who were at least rotational players. Most of his successful rushes came via pushing the pocket with his size and strength.
The Vikings think there’s more to his game than that.
“It’s very unique to have a guy that’s 340 pounds that can show the quickness you’d like a three technique to have in spurts, it’s very unique,” Patterson said. “For me, my job is to get him to bring that out of his game more often. You saw yesterday in practice, he had a time in a team period where he hit that same move, and stood right in front of the quarterback and would’ve had a sack. In his career previously, I never saw that on tape.”
On Monday, Pierce told Purple Insider that Baltimore’s system was designed to highlight the outside rushers. The Haloti Ngatas and Brandon Williams’s of the Ravens’ world stuffed gaps to create rushing lanes for rushers like Terrell Suggs and Matthew Judon.
“It’s just more opportunity for me here,” Pierce said. “That’s one of the reasons why I came [to Minnesota].”
The Vikings’ coaching staff is just starting to understand what Pierce can do. He elected not to play the 2020 season over COVID concerns and then he missed the early days of camp with a calf injury so they’re seeing the results of his efforts while he was waiting to rejoin the team. Leading up to this season Pierce put more emphasis on his pass rush moves, training with O-line/D-line specialist coach Brandon Jordan in Texas.
“Focusing more on not just pushing the pocket but getting off clean and affecting the quarterback,” Pierce said. “It’s just added focus and honing my skills while I was away and it’s starting to come together.”
With Danielle Hunter as the only proven pass rusher on the defensive line, the Vikings are banking on both Pierce and ex-Giant Dalvin Tomlinson playing off each other to step up their production from previous years.
“We can both set each other up for a lot of power rushes and sprinkle in some finesse rushes here and there and run some interior games and stuff like that and Danielle and the other guys are going to take pressure off us so it makes it a lot easier,” Tomlinson said.
Back in the day defensive tackles like Pierce might have been able to focus heavily on the run-stuffing element but in 2019 Pierce played 308 snaps against the pass and only 205 as a run defender. That’s emblematic of the NFL’s increase in first down passing and the focus on play-action passes on early downs. Per SharpFootballStats, the average team runs 50% of the time on first down and there were seven teams that ran 45% or less in 2020.
“Knowing that not every first down and second down is going to be a run and when it’s a pass I have to convert faster,” Pierce said.
Pierce wouldn’t be the first nose tackle to develop a taste for getting to the quarterback under Patterson and Mike Zimmer. In Linval Joseph’s three years with the New York Giants he failed to register 30 QB pressures in a single season. He did so in back-to-back seasons in 2016 and 2017 with the Vikings and ranked 18th in pass rush win rate in ‘17.
Zimmer said it’s all about putting the big men in position to get after quarterbacks.
“I think for [Pierce], we have to give him some opportunity to use those things,” Zimmer said. “Either moving him or saying 'hey, go pass-rush now' because he does have a lot of quickness in him. There's a lot of times he's getting singled up so if we can do that and push the pocket, it'll help the odds.”
What is the value of Pierce’s increased pressure?
In 2020 only two quarterbacks had QB ratings over 90 on passes thrown while under pressure. No starter completed more than 60% of their passes in those situations and only DeShaun Watson cleared 8.0 yards per attempt.
The Vikings were unable to create any pressure up the middle last year. Nose tackle Shamar Stephen came away with just nine QB pressures all year and had a pass rush win rate of 4.0, per PFF, the 11th lowest mark in the NFL.
In 2018, PFF studied the impact of where pressure came from and found that pressure created from the nose guard position created more negative Expected Points Added for the offense than rushes from three-technique. When pressure came from both the nose position and edge, it created the most amount of havoc.
Here’s a look at their findings on the location of pressures:
EPA generated on pressures in 2017 for:
Only edge pressure: -0.303 (n = 3489)
Only interior pressure: -0.178 (n = 1740)
Only nose pressure: -0.213 (n = 298)
Only off-the-ball LB/SCB pressure: -0.286 (n = 696)
Edge and interior pressure: -0.632 (n = 802)
Edge and nose pressure: -0.482 (n = 102)
Interior and nose pressure: -0.275 (n = 58)
So Pierce’s ability to get in the QB’s face can’t just be a novelty. It’s a must-have. And the Vikings are pleased to see it playing out in camp.
“I was pleasantly surprised, that’s a big thing for a big man to have,” Patterson said.
Additional notes
— Per KSTP, the Vikings will work out Everson Griffen. Earlier this offseason Griffen campaigned on social media for a return. With the coaches clearly not thrilled with the performances of DJ Wonnum and Stephen Weatherly, Griffen may end up back across from Danielle Hunter.
— Anthony Barr was not in attendance on Tuesday. He has now missed six of the last eight practices. Zimmer acknowledged Barr isn’t just getting veteran days. “He’s got something that he’s dealing with,” Zimmer said.
Nick Vigil has been taking his place. Behind Vigil is a group fighting for jobs that includes Ryan Connelly, Blake Lynch, Chazz Surratt and Troy Dye. Cam Smith has missed the last two practices after suffering a concussion on Saturday.
— After taking a couple live reps on Tuesday, Justin Jefferson did not participated in the live parts of practice. The Vikings’ star receiver said that he’s been getting advice from his teammates about AC Joint sprains
“AC’s are so common,” he said. “Pretty much like 90% of the guys in the locker room has AC’s before. So they telling me different stories and stuff. They telling me it’s going to linger, but I mean, just gotta hold through it.”
— Chad Beebe, Troy Dye and Myles Dorn were back at practice after missing Monday. Tyler Conklin was in attendance but did not participate after leaving with an injury Monday.
— Mike Zimmer was happy with Kellen Mond’s Monday practice saying, “I actually thought he had his best practice since he’s been here yesterday. I thought he was accurate with the football, he was much more quick and in tempo, beating them in and out. We did another 2-minute drill for him yesterday. I felt like that was his best practice that he’s had since he’s been here. So keep stacking those up, and that will help him.”
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Man this team is so wild. My wife asked me last night if the Vikings were going to be good this year and I was speechless for like 90 seconds trying to figure out how to best use this brief glorious window in which I was invited to talk Vikings to discuss the choose-your-own-adventure nature of this team that has equal odds of the hero getting the girl or end up being impaled in the stake pit. I still am hoping for something to emerge at the other defensive end spot, but frankly if this Pierce hype when combined with the Hunter hype is legit (before we even get to Tomlinson and Richardson and our stable of depth pieces with rushing potential), we could probably put my 10 year old nephew at RDE and he'll come home with 7 sacks.
As far as Griffen, I am lukewarm on bringing him in, and in general I feel like it says way more about Weatherly than it does Wonnum. I imagine that the Vikings wanted Weatherly to be an averagish starter that Wonnum et al. could push, and I haven't heard the coaches say anything legit negative about Wonnum, but rather than keep on saying that he is developing well. Also, to me it indicates that Zimmer is kind of done treating Cousins with kid gloves (given Griffen's rather blunt comparison of Kirk to a choice body part earlier this offseason), which is yet another amusing development that has a chance to backfire spectacularly.
And for Mond, him splitting time with the 2nd team yesterday was massive and quite unexpected. I think that Zimmer realized after the preseason game that Browning wasn't good enough to be a Mannion-esque boring yet competent backup, and as such decided that it might make more sense to lean into the variance of Mond (annoying that he would never lean into the Kirk as Matthew has asked for, but leaning into any QB would be a welcome change) rather than just stay with a backup QB that was almost certainly not good enough to move the needle (which royally stinks - Browning was a great storyline, and it was fun to cheer for him). I bet that if Mond doesn't absolutely poop the bed over the next few practices that he has even odds of being the #2 QB this weekend (which would be another example of Zimmer not protecting Kirk).
This isn't on your list of additional notes Matthew, but you and Courtney brought up something on this morning's podcast that I've been thinking about ever since making my critical comments about Mike Zimmer's demeanor after the Broncos game.
The more I parse out those absurdly candid comments of Zimmer's, the more I think there's a serious divide between he and Rick Spielman. I don't think this is a minor issue for the problem to be manifesting in public the way it is. It makes me wonder if both men are pointing at each other and looking at the Wilfs saying "Hey, I just buy/coach the groceries, I didn't get to choose/coach them."
I won't pretend to know if the Vikings bad run of being unable to hit on late round draft picks is a coaching or talent evaluation issue, but it's very bothersome to me that Zimmer would make this public. Aside from it being unprofessional (imho), it tells me that there's a serious relationship problem between these two men and it makes me wonder if one of them will be out the door this season even if the Vikings have a respectable year.